Open Air

Smart blogs and remixing

October 30th, 2008 Posted by: l.dewis

Andraz Tori from Zemanta gave a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo about making it easier for people to create content, which made my ears perk up. Regular readers of this blog will know I’ve spent some time moaning about the interface we provide academics with to remix Open University course content in OpenLearn. So anything that can provide a nicer content creation environment is of interest – not just technically but in a way that appeals to the motivations of authors. Andraz said GUI is 80% – make creation of content easy.

Zemanta describes itself as a smart blog – as you write your blog posts it understands what you are writing about and offers you related links, photos and tags. This leads to opportunities for direct monetization (through affliate links), a better service for the author, ability to skip search and save time, and possibly more page views through trackbacks. The author’s noncreative workload is reduced, potentially motivating them to write more regularly and allowing them to concentrate on crafting their content. It also steers the author towards others discussing the same subject, helping them to become part of a community. The reblog feature (clipping other people’s blog posts to insert them inside your own) and efficient use of metadata leads to more chances for distribution and repurposing. Recommended interlinks to content found elsewhere of our own websites can also help with SEO. Real time updates on who else is writing about your subject while you write a post is great for staying topical and on top of commentary in any debate and can be filtered to include the key influencers in your field of interest. (I fear I would get easily distracted.)

The author can act as a filter for recommended content and metadata by compiling whitelists and blacklists. The system understands previous behavior and the data being dealt with to make random recommendations.

Some bloggers see 10-15% traffic increase from smart blogging.

Andraz gave some non-Zemanta examples and talked a little about “the next web” where computers will understand content and social context better. What if your computer understood what you were writing about, knew who you know and suggested content your community likes, for you to reference. What would your text editor look like? He quoted Marta Strickland on the idea that the next web is like a great party host, introducing people for meaningful conversation.

This raises interesting questions for remixing educational content intelligently and easily. If something like Zemanta could be used to guide you, making your remix better, easier, more enjoyable, more satisfactory and quicker to produce would more academics remix educational content? We already have some simple tools like the OER recommender that suggests links to related OER content.

I wonder also if this has implications for research – making it easier to reference the work of other academics? What about plagarism? And will smart blogging create more personalised content or limit differentiation between authors writing in an echo chamber of key influencers? Will it change who is listened to and written about but still result in an academic elite simply judged by a new set of metrics?

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, User interaction, Web 2.0, oer